#stark trek ds9

[geogrewife]

Garak had no reason to look this good after murdering a bunch of Jem’Hardar.

[jvlianbashir]

kira and odo are ketchup and mustard

[vaguely-concerned]

I feel like there's got to be a hairdresser somewhere on ds9 and they are constantly having the weirdest time anyone's ever had

[trekacrosstheuniverse]

A TAILOR you say??

Soooooooo

Garak is back on DS9 and is still being a tailor

Someone new has their own shop on DS9 after Garak left

[tesray]

I love the evil parallel universe in deep space nine. Everyone is different except Garak. He's just like that no matter what

[gossyreblogs]

I’ve been on a slow rewatch of Star Trek DS9; tonight I’m on S2 E23, “Crossover”

And, just. Damn. I’d almost started to think it was just part of Avery Brook’s acting style, but he absolutely can be mobile and expressive—even with subtle expressions—when he wants to be!

Which just… means that Sisko, as a character, isn’t. With very nearly the sole exception being when he’s interacting with Jake. Huh.

[sapphicpoetspost]

“I feel bad for the guy, his wife exploded.” - my authentic reaction to watching the very first episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine with my best bro @singingsawenthusiast

this is my second ever stark trek episode to ever watch. the first episode I watched was the unionization episode.

[evilghostfarmer]

there’s something so human about a Starship crew.

“i may be staring down the barrel of things i’ve never known, and do not understand, but i have you, and that makes it all just a little bit more reachable.”

i am floating in the empty, in the vast, in the dark, but i have these once strangers, this now family. i’d live and die by their word, because they are just, and kind, and moral. they are my friends. and i trust them completely.

[deep-aural-fixation]

Just finished the DS9 novel Enigma Tales. Loved it. The world building was a joy to read. Garak was the right combination of cunning, and a little pathetic (just visit Juilan already, instead of writing letters you'll never send, dammit).

And Pulaski was the best part, for me. I truly loved reading about her misadventures, and it made me want more. I would read a whole series of her calling bullshit wherever she finds it and causing interstellar incidents. Removing Doctor Pulaski from the context of her arc with Data does wonders for anyone's appreciation of her character.

The side characters were all great, and like a true enigma tale, there are a lot of guilty parties in a complex web. I can't help but think Lang was a red herring in the grander scheme, but who knows. Still hate Secrion 31, but like it or not, they're a part of canon. Might as well use them. Still, it's a 5/5 from me.

I've read about 9 DS9 novels and didn't finish two others. For the most part they've been really good to okay. Only a couple I didn't care for at all. But the post-canon stories have been really impressive.

[jimintomystery]

DS9: "The House of Quark"

A drunkard named Kozak gets himself killed in Quark's bar. After Quark claims to have killed the Klingon in self-defense, Kozak's widow Grilka marries him to solidify her control of the estate. Meanwhile, Chief O'Brien struggles to help his wife Keiko after she closes Deep Space Nine's school.

This is debatably a Ferengi episode, since so much of it is about Quark and Rom and their problems are played for laughs. But usually Ferengi episodes are all about problems caused by quirks of Ferengi culture, so the Klingon angle here just hits different. If you're looking for a distinction between a Quark episode and a Ferengi episode starring Quark, that'll have to do.

The gimmick here is that Quark doesn't understand anything about the Klingon rules and rituals that have dragged him into this mess, even after it's explained to him. Pulling that off in 1994 is no small feat. After seven years of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we're used to seeing this world through Lieutenant Worf's eyes, and he made it make sense to us. So making it feel confusing and inconsistent without contradicting the existing lore is pretty impressive. Of course, it helps that the Klingon code of honor is full of loopholes that give cover to Kozak's sinister brother D'Ghor.

The common theme between the A and B plots are that business on the station has dried up because everyone is afraid of a Dominion attack coming through the wormhole. It's an interesting change in direction from the previous two seasons, but there's no follow-up; the station is clearly bustling with activity within a few episodes. The only lasting development is that Keiko's school will never re-open.

Keiko started DS9's school in part to give herself something to do, since the station didn't need a botanist. On TNG she worked in the Enterprise aboretum, but now we're told that she could never be happy doing that same job on DS9. Plan B, then, is for Keiko to join a scientific expedition on Bajor, which is great, but why didn't anyone suggest that in the first place, before she even started the school? It's as if the O'Briens had to wait for the showrunners to get the school business out of their system.

[geogrewife]

Are you telling me that Bashir has been replaced with a changeling for over a month and no one noticed??

The way I shouted “Bashir?!” When he came on screen.

Bashir being captured for over a month, having a lot of trauma (which no one acknowledges.) Yet he immediately uplifts the characters around him. Bashir is too good for them tbh.

[jvlianbashir]

What should be the first episode of Ds9 that I show my boyfriend?

He's agreed to watch one with me and I want it to be a really good one but not one that you need huge amounts of context to understand

Any ideas would be appreciated thank you!

hmmmm.... "far beyond the stars" is always one of the gold standards for me as far as ds9 episodes, but context about the show and its themes and characters certainly adds a lot to the experience of watching it so i'm not sure i would show it to him out of the gate.

"duet" was a gripping watch for me the first time i saw it and i think the episode gives you enough context within itself to understand the story without having watched the show in its entirety.

"past tense: parts i & ii" don't really require much ds9 or star trek knowledge at all to understand if i remember correctly and i do enjoy those episodes. they always feel relevant and with it now actually being 2024, especially so.

"whispers" was an episode that fucked me up a little - one of my more favorite "o'brien suffers" episodes - and if i remember, it was pretty self-contained as far as what info you needed to understand it

good luck and i hope he gets inspired to watch more!

[j3rrysblog]

Awesome Star Trek fact #1

Starships run on semen, called spirk in the future. They used to masturbate into receptacles named Jeffries tubes, but in modern Treks, it’s all automated via the holodecks.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Star Trek SNW finally settles decades-old canon issues (spoiler commentary for S02E03)

(Image credit: Startrek.com)

I say spoiler right in the headline, and I mean it. Read no further if you have yet to see Star Trek: Strange New World’s latest episode, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. (The image above is a publicity image and is also in the trailer, so it’s not really a spoiler.)

The TL;DR is: one single line of dialogue fixed nearly 30 years of canon issues. I am not exaggerating. More under the break. And this will be a long one:

To “cross the streams” a moment, it is undeniable canon (not shipping wishful thinking) that not only did the Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who have feelings for Clara Oswald, he even considered her not his companion, but his girlfriend. That was made undeniable canon in a couple lines in “Deep Breath” when the Twelfth Doctor said “Clara, I’m not your boyfriend,” Clara replied, “I never thought you were.” and Twelve said “I never said it was your mistake.” That was in stark fact. One line of canon dialogue confirmed what many speculated and the show hinted at. This is separate from what came after, any retcons later writers did, and all that. 

Well, one line of dialogue from a guest character in last night’s episode of Strange New Worlds put into canon something I and many others have felt not only about SNW, but the current breed of Trek shows and indeed there were signs of this going back to both Star Trek DS9 and Star Trek Voyager in the 1990s.

The Romulan time agent, Sera, played by Adelaide Kane who some may remember from playing Mary Queen of Scots in Reign, states that the Eugenics war involving Khan was supposed to happen in 1992, but was delayed 30 years due to temporal wars and other interference from the future. (To be precise she’s likely referring to Khan’s birth since he was in his 30s or 40s by the 1990s, the time TOS established the Eugenics Wars took place; here he’s a kid - possibly even a Canadian kid!  The war itself is still some years away.)

That explains a lot. Why since DS9 the Eugenics Wars were redated to the mid-21st century. Why SNW’s pilot episode last year confirmed the Eugenics Wars were part of WW3, not a separate conflict.  Why the Voyager episode where they go back to Earth on 1996 featured no mention of the Eugenics Wars. Why Kirk and everyone else already knows the name Noonien-Singh (even if La’an hadn’t introduced herself by name to “Prime” Kirk at the end, he would have seen her testimony about being Khan’s descendant at Una’s trial. There is no way in this timeline that Kirk, Spock or anyone else would not recognize Khan’s name instantly when the events of Space Seed happen. Heck, even the fact the SNW Enterprise doesn’t match up with the 1960s designs that were also featured in TNG, DS9 and Star Trek: Enterprise. Or even stuff like people like Uhura knowing who T’Pring was years before they were supposedly first introduced to her in “Amok Time”. It even gives wiggle room for the fact this time-travel episode actually breaks canon with the time-travel-based episodes of Picard Season 2! (Laris would have known about Sera and stopped her, right? Sean at TrekCulture had a gripe about this in his Youtube review)

Sera basically admitted that because of people farting around with time and the temporal wars (recall that it was strongly implied in Enterprise that the Romulans were involved if not responsible for that) that the timeline has been changed. 

It can’t be denied anymore and it’s such a liberating thing. Now, SNW is free to truly tell reimagined stories (like the retelling of Balance of Terror last season, albeit that was another alternate timeline), to make T’Pring a vital character and build her, to accelerate the Spock-Chapel romance that was only hinted at in TOS. To truly let Paul Wesley develop his own version of Kirk, not to mention Ethan Peck’s Spock and whoever next plays McCoy (you know they will bring him in eventually and if SNW avoids the fate of Prodigy and lasts a few years, they’re going to have to start getting lined up for a new TOS-era series). Hell, the door is now open for Kirk and La’an to establish a “prime-era” romance - imagine a retelling of Space Seed with La’an in the picture (or at least Kirk remembering her).

This will be a hot take for some. But my rebuttal comes from Doctor Who: “Time can be rewritten.” Finally, nearly 30 years after what was thought to be an erroneous dating of the Eugenics Wars in a throwaway line in an episode of DS9 (I believe the producers even said it was a goof back then), and 22 years of people griping about how the prequel series were not lining up with what came before, either esthetically or storyline-wise (Enterprise, Discovery, SNW, and Picard S2 to a degree), we have a firm, canonical explanation. People will still gripe about politics, general quality, casting, whatever, of shows - that’s a separate argument - but at least in terms of canon, this has changed everything. In a good way.

I only wish they hadn’t killed off Sera. I got very strong Sela vibes from her (Sela/Sera? Coincidence?) and I would have liked to see her become a recurring nemesis. Then again, as I just said, time can be rewritten. 

[eponymous-rose]

So I've been rewatching Star Trek: TNG as comfort TV during/post-move and just got to Yesterday's Enterprise, which I remember liking well enough, but man, it's really unusual in the context of the rest of these early episodes. For one thing, the violence shown is a lot more stark than we've seen in the show thus far - Riker with his throat cut, Captain Garrett with the metal shrapnel in her head, lingering close-ups on dead faces. It's dark and moody and the "happy ending" resolution (as far as we know at this point, anyway) is saving the few survivors of a brutal battle, patching them up, and then shipping them straight back into that battle to be killed.

Given the show's not-so-great track record with its female characters, it's weirdly refreshing that we get a re-do for Tasha Yar. And yeah, she falls in love with a dude and goes off with him on his ship, but she was ready to say goodbye to him and that would've been that - what finally prompts her to step willingly into the meat-grinder is the realization that she had an "empty death" (Guinan had some really raw lines in this one) in the other timeline, and that now her death can have some meaning. It's nicely done, if a bit of a self-flagellating "mea culpa" on the writers' parts.

The alternate timeline isn't the gleeful, campy evil of the Mirrorverse, it's just an exhausted grind through the final days of a losing war. Lots of little touches show how desperate things have become - Wesley's been fast-tracked to a full ensign, Picard is a tactician first and foremost (he takes officers' opinions under advisement, yes, but he's also keeping from them the inevitable, imminent surrender), the bridge is laid out so the captain is front and center with everyone else in the background. As a contrast with the actual Enterprise's chill 90s living room lounge vibe, it's pretty striking. It's like a sneak preview into the bleak and war-heavy sci-fi that would start saturating pop culture a decade or so later, and then it's a firm rejection of that premise - "This isn't a ship of war. It's a ship of peace."

I have a long, long history with TNG - DS9 is my favorite Trek on balance, but TNG is encoded in my DNA. From around ages 3 and 5, my brother and I were watching and rewatching TNG constantly. (My parents would laugh over the fact that my brother didn't know how to read yet but had memorized the episode titles of the first couple seasons.) We had pajamas. We scoured every garage sale and had a giant metal can full of action figures and phasers and tricorders and ships and even, shockingly, that transporter toy that made things disappear using mirrors.

The tactile experience of those toys is burned in my brain - the loose nacelles on the Enterprise model, the click of the left phaser button, the little hole at the bottom of the Borg cube that we once stuck a pencil in and had the tip of the graphite snap off and rattle around forevermore. My brother and I played incessantly with our action figures, to the point where most of them had the paint at least partially rubbed off - we created hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of new episodes over the years. The first time I ever used a touchscreen was at some sort of Star Trek exhibition in Canada in the early 90s that we stumbled across on our way to visit my grandparents.

I'm always fascinated by how kids interact with fictional media - my brother and I were so young, but we obviously knew Star Trek wasn't real. Except... I just always assumed that important people watched it, realized "well, that seems nice", and were actively working to make that future happen. I was (perhaps a little embarrassingly) older when I realized that no, we weren't gonna be out there on science missions to the stars during my lifetime. At least, not in an Enterprise kind of way.

At any given time, there's just this Star Trek filter over how I experience the world - when I got to go to college thanks to scholarships, I had that weighty feeling of responsibility and awe that came with daydreaming about Starfleet Academy. I saw my career shift from the gold of engineering to the blue of science to the red of command. And the older I get, the more I appreciate a show that, for all its flaws, managed to make a utopia interesting and complex.

Because TNG was such a phenomenon when I was a little kid in the early 90s, a lot of my family relationships also have TNG tied up in them. I remember going to my grandparents' apartment and my uncle showing us a fan magazine about the show. I remember another uncle who didn't really "get it" but gifted me and my brother astronaut ice cream because he knew we liked that space stuff. I remember watching most episodes curled up on the couch or my parents' bed with my brother and my mom and dad. When Mom got sick and we talked about death, I remember the way she wistfully brought up the Nexus from Generations or how she hoped she could see the next season of Picard (she didn't, sadly, but she really enjoyed that first season). Hell, one of the first real bonding moments I had with my otherwise hyper-professional and businesslike PhD advisor was when she made a TNG joke, I laughed at it, and she said, "I just love that show, everyone's so nice to each other."

It's just been a lot of fun coming back to this show, is all. I think I periodically forget how much it's affected me and the extent to which it was a fundamental, formative influence. While a lot of it either hasn't aged well or fails to hold up to modern media analysis, so much of it is still lovely, and occasionally there are these moments of shockingly good storytelling.

Star Trek good.

[gossyreblogs]

I’ve finally started rewatching Star Trek DS9 with the vague intentions of maybe actually watching and finishing the last season this time.

I’m about halfway through the first season, and I had honestly forgotten just how prominent of a character Quark is from the get-go. He gets a heck of a lot of screen time!

Quite the journey for the Ferengi from their intro in TNG, hah.

Speaking of, I’m making a parallel attempt to properly watch TNG for the first time. The contrast is stark!

The first time I watched DS9, I had very little else from the franchise with which to compare. And I think I might have been coming fresh from Farscape, of all things, which — well. Was Farscape.

So to me, the DS9 characters were just the characters.

But now that I’ve watched TOS and more of TNG, it certainly stands out more that half the cast of DS9 turns to blackmail, bribery, and yelling as very early steps in their problem solving, to say nothing of their other personal flaws.

What I’m saying is that I can see why it may have been jarring for long-term Star Trek fans. 😂